When she’s watched the kids get on their tram, Willa trudges to her bus stop, walking as slowly as possible. Mostly because she’s dreading the conversation with her English and History teachers about why she didn’t get her homework done. Her skin crawls at the thought of their sympathetic concern. Maybe she can get it done on the bus. Then she won’t have to tell anyone.
Part of her wishes she could stay home. She’s so tired. Sleep did not love her last night. Worry about Nan prodded at her. And there was guilt too.
“Are you mad at Finn or something?” Kelly asked as they walked back to the lounge room last night.
“No,” Willa said quietly, although she was already feeling the slide of shame because she knows she was weird last night.
“Well, it kind of seemed like you were.”
Willa wasn’t mad. She was just paralysed by the sight of both Finn and her mother standing on the doorstep, their expressions so sympathetic and searching. It was too much. She didn’t mean to be rude, though. She really didn’t. It was just her awkwardness hardening into paralysis, like it always does.
Still, Kelly’s question picked at her. And later, after she replayed the scene in her mind over and over, she wanted to text Finn, to explain that the minute she saw Finn, all Willa had wanted to do was to be absorbed into Finn’s comfort. But she couldn’t. Not with Kelly and Anita there. Not with all those worried eyes on her. But Willa didn’t know how to put that into text, so she didn’t.
Willa nearly stops in her tracks when she spots Finn up ahead, waiting at Willa’s bus stop in her purple school dress and blazer. This time, she forces herself to keep moving towards her.
When she gets close, Finn gives her a small smile. “Hey. I wasn’t sure if you were going to school.”
“Nan said I had to.”
Finn smiles. “Still a teacher, even in hospital. My mum would do that too.”
Willa forces a return smile, but it fades fast. They stare at each other as people rush around them, intent on their mornings. Willa tries to urgently to think of the right thing to say, but it isn’t coming.
Finn gets there first. “Listen, I wanted to say that I’m sorry about last night. I just wanted to see if you were okay, but then Mum would only let me come over if she came too. I really didn’t mean to impose.”
“You didn’t,” Willa manages to say.
“Oh, okay, well…good.” Finn gives her a diffident smile, but it fades quickly. “Anyway, I don’t want to get in your face, but just...let me know if you need me.” She stares at her feet, kicking one shoe against the other. “I’ll be there.”
Why does Willa feel like crying? “Thank you,” she manages to whisper. It comes out stiff and formal, though. Like a lie.
“I better go. You’ll be late. I just…” Finn bites her lip, hesitating. “I hope you’re okay. I’ll see you.” Her smile is watery as she walks away.
A sadness seeps through Willa. Why doesn’t she know how to ask for things? For what she wants? Before she can talk herself out of it, she takes off at a run. “Finn, wait!”
Finn’s face is tense as she turns at the entrance to the park. But because she’s Finn and her heart’s so damn big, it dissolves into a smile at the sight of her.
Willa comes to a halt in front of her and fidgets with her prefect badge. “What are you doing later? After school?”
“No plans. Why?”
“Want to come over and study with us?”
Finn smiles. “Of course.”
“We’re going to see Nan straight after school, but we’ll be back later. You could stay for dinner, maybe?”
“Okay. Just message me when you’re heading home, and I’ll come over.”
Relief replaces sadness. How does Finn make things so simple, when all Willa seems to do is make them hard? This is what Willa actually wants, what she wanted all along. For Finn to be smiling at her. To be able to hold the promise of seeing her again all through this day. “I will.”
Unable to relinquish this moment without touching her, Willa takes a tentative step forward. But Finn’s coming at her already.
“I’m sorry,” Willa whispers as Finn folds her into a hug. “If I was—”
“Sh.” She squeezes Willa tight. “Don’t be sorry. Just…need me if you want to. Okay?”
Willa swallows hard and presses her cheek to Finn’s hair. “I’m not used to it.”
“I know. Get used to it.”
CHAPTER 18
Finn
She’s about to hang up when finally he picks up.
“Finn-o!”
“Hey, Dad.”
“Sorry, I was out the back. Why aren’t you at school?”
“I am. It’s lunchtime. I’m waiting for Dan, but he’s late.”
“So you’re only talking to me because Dan’s late? Don’t I feel special?”
“No, I’m ringing because I need to ask you something.” Finn settles onto their bench in the front yard.
“Shoot.”
“How do you get journalists to write a story about something? Like, how does it get to the papers?”
“I thought you were going to hit me up for money or permission to do some reckless teen thing.”
“Hilarious. Have you met me? I don’t do reckless. I barely do mildly adventurous.”
He laughs. “So why do you want to know?”
“I just do,” she tells him, drumming her fingers. “I’ll explain in a minute.”
“Okay,” he says slowly, in that way he always does when she asks him a question. It drives her crazy. “Usually, unless it’s something we’re looking for and we contact them ourselves, organisations and companies send us media releases about stories they want told or news they want people to hear.”
“Right.” She’s heard Kayah talking about media releases at the warehouse. “It’s that easy?”
“Well, it’s that easy to send one, but it doesn’t mean we’ll write about it. It depends on whether anyone thinks there’s a good story in it.”
She stretches out on the bench, sunning her bare legs. “So how does they decide if it’s a good story?”
“I don’t know. You just know after a while.”
“Helpful.”
He laughs. “Okay, well, when I was at university, they taught us about these things called news values. It’s like these unspoken criteria about what makes an event newsworthy.”
“Like what?”
“Well, the most obvious one is that it has to be new, or it isn’t news. It has to be about someone prominent or important, or about a place or people we have some kind of relationship or affinity with. Or it has to involve some kind of conflict. Journos love a conflict story. Politicians arguing, wars, athletes fighting on the field. Then there’s the stories about weird things no one expected. Like that story this morning about the woman who killed her husband in Croatia. We probably wouldn’t even hear about that here except that she used a soup ladle to do the job. That gave the story a reason to be told. Then there’s the fluff pieces.”
“Fluff pieces?”
“You know, the story at the end of the news, right before the weather. The one that gives you the warm and fuzzies. The sick children who are cured. Police or firemen rescuing cats from a tree. Stories that make us feel good about the world. We need one of those to balance out all the bad news we’ve just heard.”
“Right.” Finn chews her lip. She has no idea where their story would fit into all of this. “I still don’t know what to do.”
“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you actually tell me what you’re trying to do?”
She fills him in on what’s happening at the centre, and their so-far useless attempts to attract any media attention.
He loves it, of course. Her dad’s never not loved an uphill battle or a cause. One of Finn’s first memories is going to a protest about protecting journalists’ jobs. She remembers holding his hand tight as they walked Bourke Street, surrounded by towering adults, electrified by the wall of
sound and movement that only a group of people passionately believing could make.
“Okay,” he says. “So you have a cause and you need to get it into the public eye. Trouble is, there’s more competition for attention when it comes to a cause than anything else. You have to find a unique way to attract attention. That’s why organisations are always finding off-the-wall means to promote things, like getting people to shave their heads to support cancer research or to grow moustaches for men’s health, or getting people to not eat for forty hours to help countries in famine. The media love stuff like that. There’s photo ops and human interest, so it’s an easy story to write.”
“So we have to figure out how to do something like that to get noticed?”
“It’d help. On your plus side, you have the marriage equality debate going strong, so LGBT issues have a bit of currency right now, but on the downside, you’re always going to have lost dogs’ homes full of puppies, and sad babies trumping cute gay teens in your attempt at being the fluff piece.”
“Great.” Finn gnaws at a fingernail and watches Dan stroll towards her, lunch in hand. “This is hard. I just thought we could get a reporter to come down or something.”
“No paper’s got the time or money unless you give them a good reason to come down. The way the industry is these days, most journalists are doing three people’s jobs. You have to hand them a story on a plate. Then some local papers might consider it.”
“Great,” she says with a sigh. “I feel so much better now.”
“Don’t give up, Finn. Just come up with something to make them look. You’re smart. You’ll think of something.”
“I hope so,” she says as Dan drops onto the edge of the bench, clutching a greasy bag of chips and a can.
“I’d make a couple of calls to the guys at my paper, but I’m not so popular right now.”
“I should go,” she says. “Dan’s here.”
“So when are you coming for another visit?”
“I don’t know. Soon. See you, Dad. And thanks.” She puts her phone in her pocket and gives Dan a weary smile. “Hi.”
He holds out his bag of chips drowning in tomato sauce. “I couldn’t take any more of mum’s salads.”
She shakes her head.
“Was that your Dad?”
“Mhm. Needed some journalism advice.”
“He still in Tasmania?”
“Yep.”
“Does it still suck?”
“It really, really does. Do you know what I’m most scared of?”
“What?”
“That the longer he stays there, the more they’ll just get used to this. Used to being separate. Then it’ll be easier for them to never get back together.” She watches a chip packet whisking past in the breeze. “At least when they were in each other’s faces, fighting, they could actually remember what it was like to be together, to be in the same room.” She frowns. “Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does.” He gives her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, mate.”
She smiles at him, glad it’s Dan Tuesday.
“There’s one upside to this week, though.”
“What?”
“School holidays next week.”
“Oh yeah.” She’d totally forgotten about that. Bring it on. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
“Happy to be of assistance.”
CHAPTER 19
Willa
Onions hit the pan with a thick sizzle. Willa breathes in the beautiful familiarity, the overture of so many meals in this house. If Nan isn’t here to make this smell, Willa will make it for her.
Nan was awake today, restored to her ineffable, glorious Nan-ness, even with the bandages and the hospital sheets. She was pale and slightly shocked, but she acted like everything was normal while she interrogated them about school. She didn’t give Jack and Riley a moment to give into their unease at being in the stark ugliness of a hospital room. It was like nourishment to see her alive to the world again. And even though Willa’s so tired her eyeballs hurt, she feels better than she has all day.
Jack wanders into the kitchen, standing at arm’s length, the way he always does these days. Close but not too close. At the hospital, though, he let Nan clasp his hand the whole time. He smiled at her little jokes, brave before the frail truth of Nan. Sweet, solemn Jack.
He fiddles with the clutch of oregano that Willa has gathered from the garden for the sauce. Usually, she wouldn’t have bothered, because Riley has this annoying habit of laboriously picking out all “green stuff” from sauce before she’ll eat, but tonight Willa’s showing off for Finn, so flavour wins.
Jack puffs his cheeks as he thinks whatever he’s thinking and stares at the mess of dinner to be on the counter. Willa has to fight the urge to wrap her arms around him—to smother him with love—because she knows he’ll slip away. So she slings a casual arm around his shoulder and pulls him to her side for a millionth of a second before letting him go. “You good, Jackling?”
“Yeah,” he says in that shrugging, laconic way he learns from the older boys at school. She sees so much imitation in her sister and brother these days, nascent echoes of teen girl drama and boy taciturn. The prepubescent shall inherit the teenage earth.
When she releases him, he immediately steps away.
She smiles and pushes the onion around the bottom of the pan. There was a time when she couldn’t go anywhere without him pinned to her side, his hand a constant warm presence in hers. “Homework?”
“Spelling and writing.”
“You should do it before dinner.”
“Okay.” He retreats to the kitchen table where Riley and Finn are already sitting in a small sea of books, including the ones Willa hasn’t had a chance to touch yet. Seeing them makes her stir a little faster.
“We have to write about the marriage equality vote,” Riley is telling Finn. She stumbles over the word.
“Really?” Finn raises an eyebrow at Willa. “Your class is writing about the marriage equality vote?”
“Kind of. It’s part of this big project we’re doing on equal rights and…stuff.”
“And stuff,” Finn teases. “Well, I for one think a marriage equality vote’s a rubbish idea, letting the entire nation decide whether we should have equal rights we’re already supposed to have. The government should just do their job and make it happen.”
Willa wants to laugh, because she can see Riley’s hanging on to Finn’s every word, but she’s probably not actually following any of them.
“Why do you even want to get married?” Riley screws up her face. “It’s dumb.”
“That’s not the point. Shouldn’t anyone be able to if they want to?”
Willa flings a handful of peppers into the pan. The air turns sweet and smoky. She can’t imagine being married. Can’t even picture adulthood. If she really tries, she can muster some blurry images of herself at university, strolling between classes on a leafy campus, but that’s about it.
Riley crosses something out in her book with wide slashes of her pencil. “I’m never getting married.”
“Even to the biggest hottie in the world?” Finn waggles an eyebrow at her.
“We can just live together. That way, if things don’t work out, it’s easier to split.”
Finn turns to Willa, mouth open. Willa shrugs. Yep. This is her eleven-going-on-twenty-five-year-old sister.
“Hey, do you know this song?” Riley’s shoulders veer from side to side as she sings a few lines of some girl-power rap.
“How could I not?” Finn says. “It’s everywhere.”
“Willa wouldn’t know it.”
“No, I don’t,” Willa says cheerfully. There are some ineptitudes she can live with. “You should let Finn study. She came here to do homework, not listen to you.”
Riley pays precisely no attention. “Do you know this one, then?” Riley sings a couple of lines in her reedy but surprisingly tuneful little voice.
Willa’s
never heard that one either. This is why Riley has given up on her: she is a pop-cultural lost cause.
There’s hope for Finn, apparently. “Of course I know it. Do you think I go home to the sixteenth century after I see you or something?”
“Seriously, don’t you have homework to do?” Willa says.
Riley leans into Finn, conspiratorial. “Why do you date Willa? She’s so uncool. I mean, she’s the best sister in the world.” She’s backpedalling like she always does when she remembers where dinner is coming from or who might wash her favourite T-shirt so she can wear it to dance class tomorrow. She’s nothing if not strategic. “But she’s kind of like an old lady.”
“Wrong.” Finn points her pen at Riley. “You just have a very narrow definition of cool.”
Even with her back to them, Willa knows Finn’s smiling at her. And that makes her smile too.
“Maybe.” Riley sounds doubtful, though. “Hey, do you know this one?” She sings another few lines.
“This is slightly embarrassing,” Finn says. “I have it on my phone.”
“Really? Can I listen?”
“Of course.”
Next thing Willa knows some sugar-sweet pop thing is blaring out of Finn’s phone. She turns, a stem of oregano hanging from her fingers. “You own this?”
Finn just shrugs and smiles winningly at her. “There’s no accounting for taste.”
“Lefah’s got this whole album on hers. She’s allowed to have a phone,” Riley says pointedly over her shoulder at Willa, as if it’s Willa who decides these things. “We dance to it every day at lunch.”
“Show us your moves, then,” Finn says.
Riley never needs to be asked twice. The world has been her stage since the day she was born, the patch of floor in front of the sliding doors her personal one. Willa doesn’t know how many woeful tween-angst pop songs and wildly age-inappropriate dance moves she and Nan have had to endure in here. Today’s no different.
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